Some 300 Heretaunga growers packed the Havelock North Community Centre to the gills last Thursday to hear a call to action by fledging advocacy group, Heretaunga Sustainable Water (HSW).

The rally was triggered by the ongoing battle between the HB Regional Council (HBRC) and growers over the pending claw back of water abstraction consents across the Heretaunga Plains, as required by the lumbering TANK process.

The sector’s leadership – cherry grower and Regional Councillor Jerf van Beek and orchardist and Freshco director Greig Taylor, among others – appears reconciled to the present reality that extractions from the Heretaunga aquifer are over-allocated, at a cost to the environment, with an ‘interim’ cap of 90 million cubes now set in place by the yet-to-be finally settled TANK plan change (which will govern freshwater use by allusers across the Plains).

They say the issue is ‘how’ to go about rationalizing allocations.

On paper, those allocations, spread over about 1,000 consents, currently amount to about 150 million cubes, with about 50% of that actually being used, according to HBRC. To bring the allocations down, HBRC has been requiring consent holders to make their case, grower by grower, for what an ‘actual and reasonable’ future use might be … but in no case will a grower receive a higher allocation. Their deadline for providing the necessary information was this month, 31 May.

Effectively, if ultimately applied, this approach would freeze growers in place. They cannot change their land use or practices in ways that require more water; they can only perhaps ‘reorganise’ how they might use their reduced allocation to make changes. And landowners on the Plains currently without water (including Māori), would have no opportunity to access it.

So, not surprisingly, the growers term the HBRC policy ‘actual and unreasonable’! And their revolt has been steadily intensifying, with HSM now the intended vehicle to expand and professionalise the opposition.

Their concerns and lobbying have already won a concession from HBRC last week, with the Council announcing to ‘pause’ the implementation of ‘actual and reasonable’ (if the consent holder wishes) until the Environment Court finally settles the outstanding appeals before it on the TANK plan change. That Plan Change 9 was first notified in May 2020 (after a five-year stakeholder development process), generating 240 submissions. After an independent hearing panel and extensive mediation efforts, the assembled growers were told the Environment Court is not expected to hear remaining appeals until early 2026, with a final decision as late as 2017. All in, a 10+ year process.

As pained as the growers might be about adapting to a 90 million cube cap, indeed the Environment Court could lower it further as advocated by environmental and Māori appellants – both Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Inc (NKII) and Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga seek a 70 million cube cap; Forest & Bird seeks a 50 million cap.

Ironically, NKII Chair Bayden Barber addressed the Thursday meeting promising a partnership approach to the growers that sought both economic and environmental sustainability. In his careful words, he didn’t mention NKII’s appeal for cutting the interim cap by 20 million cubes.

So, while the HSW currently ‘accepts’ the interim allocation cap and the consequent need to reduce water use, it’s fair to say that ultimately they hope the situation will be relieved by the water storage project currently being advanced by HBRC. This entails storing water – 27 million cubes – behind a dam on a tributary off the main stem of the Ngaruroro.

How would that water be used? The current messaging around the project seems a bit muddled.

HBRC staff who have briefed me talk in terms of storing water for release to augment stream flows to healthy levels during dry seasons, thereby avoiding the need for water abstraction bans. That sounds like a modest eco-driven proposition … a protection strategy for all parties.

However, as described at Thursday’s rally by HBRC Councillor and grape grower Xan Harding, the contemplated stored water use broke down as 5-6 million cubes to offset current adverse environmental effects, 10 million to anticipate future climate change (not clear what that means), with “the balance” considered “new water” … which one suspects is what most growers want. That sounds like a more ambitious growth strategy, for which the case presumably will be made.

I’m told the Heretaunga Water Storage Scheme is soon to emerge from the shadows, so its goals and ambitions can be properly debated in the community.

To its credit, on paper Heretaunga Sustainable Water seems to be taking a holistic approach to the water security needs of the Plains. A wide range of tools and options are on the table and need to be welded into an integrated strategy: 

• on-farm/property/home storage 
• natural aquifer recharge 
• water conservation (notably including urban use, reduced leakage) 
• water recycling (from industrial to residential)
• wetland restoration
• efficient water irrigation
• water retaining land management practices, 
• group/global consents (which has proven the ability to rationalise and reduce water use in Twyford for some 70 participants — no ban days since 2013) 
• and possibly a dam.

However, frankly we were at this very point about 8 years ago, when the original TANK stakeholder group (on which I sat as a Regional Councillor) issued its recommendations, encompassing all of the above, to HBRC, which had pledged to adopt them.

But then the drones attacked the slow-moving TANK, culminating in the 16 appeals (some reinforced by other submitters) now sitting before the Environment Court.

The Heretaunga Sustainable Water website goes live on 16 May: www.hsw.nz

Stay tuned!